


The Machinery

by waistcoat_jive



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Mythology, Canonical Character Death, F/M, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Parallel Universes, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-18
Updated: 2012-02-19
Packaged: 2017-10-31 09:54:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/342696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waistcoat_jive/pseuds/waistcoat_jive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"The Machinery, Madam, is a term invented by the Critics, to signify that part which the Deities, Angels, or Dæmons are made to act in a Poem."</i> (Alexander Pope, in a letter to Mrs Arabella Fermor, on <i>The Rape of the Lock</i>)</p>
<p>A parallel-universe/urban-fantasy AU, of sorts.</p>
<p>There is Arthur, who doesn't know if that's even his name; there is also Eames, who hasn't always been Eames, and one day no longer will be; and there is Ariadne, who is afraid to let go of the one thing that matters to her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Arthur

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the Inception Big Bang.
> 
> I really, really want to thank csifan3, who was my beta through this entire endeavour. Thank you, dear, you've been magnificent! <3 If there are any errors left, those are completely my own, not hers.  
> Secondly, I'd like to thank staticlights, who took the time to make the art for this story, I'm sure it looks fabulous.  
> You can find the art [here](http://endgame.dreamwidth.org/3426.html)
> 
> I immensely enjoyed writing the story (although, while I was re-reading I did occasionally wonder what the hell I was on while writing it). Editing took a bit longer than I anticipated, which is why I'm posting a bit late, but I'm fairly happy with the way everything has turned out.

  
In the beginning (she always starts her story this way), the world was like an unopened hand, its fingers tightly clenched together, without room for anything else but those fingers. While there were no tangible objects to speak of yet, the potential for them existed, hidden inside the tiniest of spaces and crevices, where no one would spot them.

The hand would open, and that in itself wasn't particularly explosive. Rather, it was like being able to breathe after holding your breath for a long time; except, the universe had never truly experienced living before. (She tells him, that,) If there had been any to witness this historic event, the speed at which the universe changed, and launched itself onto its own two feet towards independence would have astounded them. Its freedom allowed it to grow from a single opened hand, out of which Ideas had sprung, and it had grown into a multitude of limbs, scattered around, but unable to call themselves a whole.

(At this time she whispers in his ear,) “It is said that the universe curled its toes in pleasure, and that was how life raised its head for the first time.” It grew, quietly, not quite visible to the naked eye, and the Ideas marvelled, would've clasped their hands together if they'd had any in the first place. They watched and they gazed, and they whispered encouraging words to growing lifeforms, hoping a loving treatment would make them every bit as great as the universe had intended them to be.

But just like that first breath, of which no one realised it had been taken, (she says,) the realisation that something big was happening swirled around, and the sheer excitement created blasts of light, spiralling debris around and hurling it into the darkness, alighting the sky with what we now call stars.

The remains of that first gasp the universe took did not disappear for quite some time; some say it has yet to disappear, but these are people who look up towards the skies and smile at something no one else can see. (A hand brushes over his hair,) “But this first breath, it enveloped the growing life; the trees, the grass, and the other lifeforms spread over the oceans and earth. It fell down, like dust, and at once those who had been touched became aware of the universe, of their gift.”

There are those who say this dust gave birth to more life, different life, that would look over all that existed, and would exist, perhaps all at once. Invisible to most, they would live across time, offer a bit of luck, a soft caress where they could. They would watch as the earth grew, watch its passage through time, and they would survive. They possessed all knowledge that could possibly be known, and yet, they knew that all that would eventually be forgotten. And even those all-knowing would, eventually, become shaped and formed by life, forgetting who they were. (It is just this story that remains, she says, remember that not knowing this is called ignorance. Don't forget that, Arthur.)

(That's not his name.)

The world flourished, and when they closed their eyes they would dream of what had happened, of the universe, of what was to come. And then the universe brought forward its greatest creation yet: man.

(In his memories she leaves. He doesn't remember seeing her again, doesn't remember if his name is truly Arthur, or just a word, created through ignorance.)

~*~

Arthur is at a fancy party this evening, mingling among the guests, and he gives careful nods to people he once knew, and people he will owe. The lighting is soft, coating the room in a blanket of velvet, lush with dark reds, and beautiful women sliding across the floor with their partners. It was just like this when Arthur first met Mal, a striking appearance, gorgeous, beautiful, demanding all eyes to look her way. Of course, back then, she could afford all those eyes, following her shape, tracing her, and she would smile, touch her face lightly, carrying a secret around for all people to see.

In the background, there is the sound of people laughing, a polite laugh, perhaps over a joke that wasn't remotely funny. Champagne glasses tinkle together, and people appear to be having fun. From the side of the room, next to a drapery, Arthur watches Mal on the dance floor, her feet never quite touching the ground the way they should; her arms are draped over his, and he holds her carefully, afraid that he might break her, or that she will disappear into thin air when he'll look away for just a second. She might have disappeared, long ago. He looks young, Arthur thinks, but everyone is young here. He sips from his own champagne, lets his eyes slide over the people present. Out of all of them, Mal is still the most radiant. Mal, with her lovely smile, hair, eyes; who only has eyes for someone else right now.

It hits Arthur. She's in love.

Mal, in love. He hadn't considered it a possibility, because Mal loves everyone. Arthur watches them dance, slowly going back and forth, with all the time in the world. There is one hand on her hip, his other one entwined with her own. Even though Arthur can't see her face from here, he knows Mal is whispering sweet little words in his ear, her lips slowly curving upwards. For a moment, Arthur catches her expression, and she's smiling an honest smile. The couple is enthralled in each other, and they don't stop moving even when there is no music for a minute or two. Arthur is afraid they've lost direction, and Mal never loses her sense of direction. She's at home when she dances.

They're using that dance floor to get to know each other, tentatively exploring. Even though Arthur doesn't even know his name, he knows Mal won't leave his side again. She will be with him, forever if it is up to her.

After what seems like an eternity – although perhaps not to them – Mal comes over to him, still with her man on her arm. He seems nervous, Arthur notes, and he better be, in Mal's company. "This is Dom," she says, nodding encouragingly.

"Arthur," he replies, and they shake hands under Mal's watchful eye.

It appears Mal has only been gone for a second, but the young man already looks crestfallen without her at his side. He silently frets for a moment, brushes his hand over his tie and says, "She's something, isn't she?"

Arthur smiles. "Absolutely," he says, "she's best you'll ever have." He studies Dom, who's looking at him expectantly, as if he'll reveal a big secret, about Mal, about this place, about the universe. But all Arthur can share is, "Be careful."

That's the last thing Arthur says to him that night. However lovely Mal is, she is also a death trap. He doesn't need to be in love with her to know that. Dom seems like a nice guy, after all, devoted to Mal, and that's all that she desires. She dances, uses inviting hands, softly brushing the air aside she leads the objects of her desire in the right direction, and she sings them a lullaby of sweet words, her own home made spell.

But it's different this time. "I will marry him, one day," Mal tells him when they're watching Dom standing in front of a class, where he lectures a group of students on different types of architecture. It suits him, Arthur thinks, even though he knows the dream work is slowly luring them in. By that time, he's seen the machine in Dom's office, and the way Mal looks at it.

"You know so," Arthur states, and she nods, an enigmatic smile playing around her lips. "All right," he says, silently giving his approval.

~*~

The first few streets they run through are a rush, exhileration pumps through his veins while his feet slap down on the cobblestones, one after the other, again and again. Their escape is a whirlwind of limbs and voices, and he can't place any of them, whether the hand touching him belongs to their companion, or if it's his enemy, trying to pull them back. When they finally stop running, Arthur thinks he has no more air in his lungs left He tries to catch his breath and his companion says, "We should do that again sometime."

Arthur turns his head, tries to frown, but the adrenaline finally disappearing out of his blood makes it hard to think clearly. "You're not serious, right?" he manages, and receives a breathless smile in return.

"Of course I am, darling." His smile is invigorating, and Arthur wants to laugh, badly and suddenly, at the ridiculousness of it all.

"I've told you a hundred times not to call me that, Francis," he replies, brushing some dust off his shirt, but after hours of heat, it isn't much use.

Francis goes quiet after he says that. "It's been a long time since anyone called me that," he admits. "They call me Eames, nowadays." Arthur doesn't ask who 'they' are, but he has an inkling of an idea. "I think we've lost them," Francis -- Eames -- says. The name feels foreign and strange on Arthur's tongue, as if belongs to another face, another man. The way Arthur remembers him, remembers Francis, is reminiscent of how Eames acts and behaves -- but yet he's not him. Not entirely; there are pieces of the man he once knew missing.

"We should have." Arthur checks the street around them, "Most pursuers wouldn't be able to follow us here."

"And even if they could," Eames adds, "in this crowd, finding us will be bloody difficult." Arthur finds himself smiling. It's as if they've only seen each other yesterday, not years ago. Francis looks about the same, albeit a bit more scruffy, rugged around the edges, and there are the lines of a tattoo peeking out from underneath his collar. Arthur doesn't remember that; it wasn't there when he last touched Francis. He brushes the feeling away, but wonders about how much he's changed himself. But Arthur still has the same name, the same mannerisms, habits. He likes the same things, and his tastes haven't changed. Francis -- Eames changes, Arthur doesn't. That's simply what they do.

"I didn't know you were in the business," Arthur says when they come to the conclusion they haven't been followed.

"Well, you know me," Francis says. They've taken to strolling around, gazing into shady shops with even shadier deals, and Arthur wonders how this is his life, drifting from one world to another, but never quite belonging anywhere. His skin still itches, sometimes, but he suppresses the desire to scratch at the seams. "It was the perfect field to explore; I reckoned there'd be a few good deals at least." Eames shrugs. "But I hadn't expected to see you, though." His gaze wanders over some other people, before finally settling on Arthur. "I didn't think you'd be the type to set foot in other people's dreams, not after what happened." And Eames -- Francis is right, he's not. He doesn't like dreamsharing, and he's not in it for the money. Not really, at least, even if it pays nicely.

Ever since Dom came up to him and told him about his father-in-law's discovery, his stomach had clenched up and had refused to relax. Arthur has a really bad feeling about dreamsharing, but he simply does what he's always done: he takes care of things, and he doesn't say a word.

Eames doesn't comment any further on the topic, though Arthur knows he wants to. Francis would have pried, tried to find a way in through a door not closed well enough to keep Arthur's secrets safe. In a different time, Arthur would have told him why he was sitting in a dirty warehouse, trying to create a plan to extract from the second in command of a corporate industry that produced bicycles, leading the market. But that was then. This is now.

And right now, Eames leans forward to peer through dirty windows, muttering something about dirty scumbags when he sees the pricetags. "We should work together sometime," he says pleasantly, and Arthur thinks of replying no, but says maybe.

He had liked the way Francis had come storming into the warehouse, how he had been professional and controlled, even with two dead bodies at his side, blood dripping out of small bullet wounds in their their foreheads; and maybe he had liked the way he had looked surprised, for a second, at seeing Arthur, working in this kind of environment, with these kind of people. They'd taken off, together, tripped down some stairs, and now they were here, someplace Other.

"Give me a call," Francis says and smiles at him -- 'I like nice things, you know?' his voice echoes in Arthur's mind -- "Cobb has my number, said he would like to use my skills one day. And if there's one man in the business you're working with, it's him." Arthur takes a deep breath, and refrains from asking how Eames even knows Dom, how he knows they've been working together. (He bets Eames knows things Francis wouldn't have been interested in.)

Francis is dead. Francis, who liked nice things, who would lean over and light his cigarette with Arthur's own, who, despite everything, liked Arthur. And not just because he thought he was something nice. Francis is dead, and Eames has come to replace him.

They walk around on dusty roads, and Arthur watches it gather on his shoes. He's thirsty, but doesn't say so, because Eames is like a stranger to him, a whole new person, someone who looks the same, but has different characteristics and mannerisms. Arthur doesn't know what makes him tick, not now, and it scares him. A little.

They climb their way back up, and back on the streets -- the normal ones -- with the sun beating down on their brows, Eames smiles just before taking off, and maybe... Arthur thinks that maybe, he'll give him a chance.

~*~

The day they bury Mal, it rains outside. The sky is layered with grey clouds, and the windows of the church are speckled with raindrops, slowly sliding down. Arthur watches over the crowd of people who have chosen to attend the funeral, and it makes him realise how well Mal was liked. There aren't just people from the place where he and Mal came from, they're from everywhere she's ever been.

Mal's absence presses down on the shoulders of those present, and when Arthur looks at the closed coffin, he feels hollow inside. He knows, rationally, that life isn't fair, but it doesn't stop him from thinking that it shouldn't have ended like this (for her). Mal didn't deserve to be scraped off a pavement, however much it pains him to think of it that way.

He sits in the back, because while he knows he is seen as one of Mal's friends, he also knows some people would rather not see him right now. In the front, Mal's father, Miles, delivers a speech about his daughter, about her life, and how eventually, every life has to end; the words that no parent should bury their child go unspoken, but are tangible in the air. However, he evades the subject they all want to know about: how did this happen? How did Mal, radiant with life, strength and love, choose to end it? How did Philippa and James lose their mother, and Dom his wife? Arthur silently clenches his fists. Dom isn't even here, and Arthur knows what they say about him, what they say he has done to Mal. But he also knows Dom loved Mal more than anything; it would've killed him to hurt her like that.

He joins the line when they carry her outside, into the rain, and no one seems to care their clothes are slowly getting drenched, or that any tears on their cheeks are mixed with droplets of rain.

They pay their respects, one by one, each person saying goodbye in their own distinctive way. When it is Arthur's turn, there is an abundance of flowers on the casket; he smiles, softly, at the sight of her favourites, but then doesn't know what else there is to say, that hasn't already been said. However much he says here, she would have known already. He directs his eyes towards the sky. Mal would know, like she always knew. A breeze softly billows his name against his cheek, bringing him back to reality.

Behind him, James hiccups against his grandfather's shoulder, and Philippa holds her grandmother's hand, her eyes wide. Arthur looks at the coffin once more before saying goodbye, shaking Miles hand, expressing his feeling of regret with Marie. He kisses James on top of his head, and Philippa wraps her arms around his waist, silently begging him not to leave. The look on her face breaks his heart just a bit more, and silently he promises her and her brother that he will bring their father back. When he leaves, he looks back at the crowd of people, gathered to grieve for Mal, and perhaps also to celebrate her life. For her, it had been a great adventure.

In retrospect, Arthur thinks he should've noticed it. The change. He knew there had been something wrong with Mal, but he had been too distracted with his own endeavours to realise how serious it was.

Mal had approached him, once, while he had been sitting in their backyard. She'd leant forward, as if to tell him a secret, and said, "I'll wake up." Words barely noticeable. Only her secretive smile told him he hadn't been dreaming, because the next moment she was pleasantly talking to the neighbours. About Philippa's new bicycle, about James starting school soon, and Arthur had looked at the young boy in his lap who gave him an enquiring look, far too bright for his age,while Arthur wondered what was going on. That was the only thing of importance Mal had said to him that entire afternoon, which he had only noticed days afterwards.

He remembers another time, when he had stepped by after just coming up from underground. He'd stood at their front door, and Mal had stared at him for the longest of times, before she even seemed to recognise who he was. "Dom isn't home," she'd said.

"I could leave," he'd replied, not really expecting her to ask him to do, "if it's too inconvenient."

"I'd prefer if you did." She hadn't truly looked him in the eye. Instead, she'd looked past him into the distance, at an image only she could see. He realises now that, perhaps, Mal hadn't even been there anymore by that time, choosing to live her life in dreams.

When the call came, six weeks later, Arthur was in China, finishing up some business. He'd stood up from his chair, remembers it falling over. He remembers the time – 9:46 – the day – Wednesday. He remembers all sorts of details he doesn't recall recording at all, when his phone rang and Dom's broken voice tentatively called out his name. "I don't know what to do," his voice had echoed into his ear, "what she said– they'll think I killed her." Arthur, who always had an answer, who always knew what to do, when to do it, and how to do it, was at a loss for words at that moment, unable to say what he needed to say.

"Stay calm," he said at last, "I know it's difficult, but please do that. For me. For the kids. Stay where you are, don't go anywhere. I'll be there as soon as I can." But when Arthur had reached Dom's house, he had been nowhere to be found, leaving Arthur to pick up the pieces, and deal with the broken-hearted expressions on Mal's parents' faces.

~*~

It takes a while before Arthur finally manages to track Dom down, and he's worried sick for him. When he finally gets a sign the extractor might be holding up in Czech Republic, he leaves immediately. Dom has dark circles underneath his eyes, and Arthur can see the grief seeping out of every pore and every sigh. He never says it out loud, but Arthur knows he wants to get back to his kids just as much as Arthur wants to help him, so they work job after job, trying to find something, anything, to help them further. And while Dom talks, and eats, and sleeps, Arthur can see the movement in the mirrors, dark spaces that only grow darker, mist that occasionally spreads through the room. Dom doesn't notice, he's too distracted by looming deadlines and government agencies that would like to put him behind bars. More than once they need to go on the run, right while they're in the middle of preparing for a job.

This time, Arthur decides they need something a bit stronger at their side, if they want to succeed. Arthur refuses to admit that any of the other close calls they've had over the last few months had anything to do with himself, but he still can't help but feel uncomfortable when Dom stares at him. Sometimes he gives him an intricate look that says 'I know what you're doing', though Arthur knows he doesn't, and can't.

People always underestimate the power of luck, and how much just a little of it can change the course of events. This is where Arthur comes in.

He goes out one night, and while Dom sleeps, Arthur plows through fields and high grass at three in the morning. He thanks his stars that there are no further requirements for his task, other than it having to be the middle of the night, it doesn't work during the day. It will be weeks before the full moon will set again, and he has no time to wait for trivial things like that. At the side of the field he's chosen for tonight, the trees loom darkly, casting long shadows with the little light they receive from the crescent-shaped moon. The dew is slowly seeping into the hem of his pants, and one sock incessantly squelches every time he puts his shoe down on the ground. Arthur is glad he brought a flashlight; there is no way he would've found what he was looking for in this sea of grass if he'd done it blindly.

It takes three hours before he finally finds it, but it's worth it, every second of it. He heads back to his hotel, following his own trail back to the road. He takes care of where he puts his feet so he won't slip and fall straight into the mud. The cab driver that drives him back to the city raises his eyebrow at his wet clothes, and the grass stains on his sleeves, but Arthur doesn't really care.

Arthur slips back inside his room after the cab driver drops him off. Dom is still asleep, but the wet patches on his pillow indicate he's been crying in his sleep – perhaps from the most terrible nightmare of all for him: knowing Mal is dead. When Dom wakes up, Arthur is working quietly at the only desk in the room, and he doesn't mention what he's seen.

The preparation for the job they're doing takes another two weeks. Their architect is a man named Viktor, who's trying to get the dream environment stable. Arthur offers himself up as test subject, to see how well the dream environment works, but the first few weeks the structure collapses within minutes, and both he and the architect wake up exasparated, because neither of them are sure what causes it.

Arthur is more impressed with the forger Dom hired, a woman named Caroline. When he asks who taught her, she smiles and says some secrets are better left a secret. It's a tricky job this time; their mark has been documented to be able to dream lucidly, so they need to keep the dream as realistic as possible. Caroline proves herself to be a remarkable asset to their team, and Arthur makes a mental note to ask her along in case they need a forger again.

In those two weeks that they get organised and everything running, Arthur keeps his find between the pages of his favourite book, and waits for the right moment to use it. Dom still believes that with every job and every opportunity, he'll finally have a chance to go back home, to his children. Arthur finds his own belief slipping away, but he goes out of his way to get them some extra luck. The Gods know they need it.

The day they're performing the extraction, Arthur puts his four-leaf clover in the pocket of Dom's pants. He won't even notice it's there until they're two countries over, when he finds some oddly coloured dust in his pocket as he tries to gather some change.

It goes as well as it could have: Dom gets his information, and they get out without the mark having noticed at all that they were there. On their way out, Dom congratulates them on a job well done, and Arthur closes his eyes, and tries not to grimace. He doesn't particularly like being shot, especially not by Mal. And while Dom was quickly reading through the mark's secrets and memorised them, she twisted the knife embedded in his gut, smiling sweetly while she did so. As the dreamer, he knew he had to stay awake, and he tried for as long as possible (not Mal, it's not Mal, she was _lovely_ ), and she stroked his hair with painted red fingers. When he did finally wake up, his hands flew to his stomach, where the wound was supposed to be.

There's no sign of blood soaking through his shirt now.

The ghost wound still hurts when they make their way out, even if it's not there. It lingers for some time, and when he closes his eyes, he can see Mal's smile in front of him, and it's not right, it's not her. Cobb is sitting next to him, satisfied they managed gather all the information they needed, and Arthur wonders for how long he'll be able to keep this up, before he cracks himself.


	2. Eames

When Cobb approaches him, Eames has about as much desire to work together as he would have crossing the ocean in a leaky boat; yet, the promise of doing the impossible, or even attempting to, pulls him over. However, during the preparatory talks with both Saito and Yusuf, he notices how stressed Cobb really is. He looks haggard; a man who has been on the run for far too long. Even if it's never said out loud, the pressure is tangible to the present members of the team. Eames knows that if they mess this up, there will be no turning back; at least not for Cobb.

Eames just turning the thought over in his head, feeling the ability of actually succeeding in inception within arm's reach, when Cobb leaves the roof where they've been conversing, leaving him alone with the Japanese businessman. Eames has nothing but respect for people like Saito, because you never know who you're dealing with. Thus, when Saito leans forward to say softly, "Do you still visit the City, Mr Eames?" he locks eyes with him, but he doesn't reply, and Saito smiles knowingly. Tourist or not, there is more about this man than meets the eye, Eames decides and from now on, Eames is going to be careful about anything that might pass his lips. You never know who could be listening.

  
He knows the man is going to interfer with the job as much as he likes. He's powerful, and Eames is willing to bet jos left shoe on the fact Mr Saito is used to getting what he wants, even if it's the seemingly impossible. He can play men like Cobb, who are desperate enough t take a few unnecessary risks, just to succeed. But even men like Saito can't just fix charges like Cobb's however powerful they are. There must be something more behind it, because the glimmer in Saito's eye points to more than a man in a business suit. He's a man who is trying to find the right kind of prey. Whether that prey is Fischer or Cobb, doesn't seem to matter much.

Eames leaves Mombasa the next day and takes a flight to where the main branch of Fischer-Morrow is located. He's already made several connections of his put out a good word for him, and place his file in strategic place, where it be seen sooner rather than later. Mr Browning will find himself recruiting soon enough, and Eames will be the one to offer himself up on a plate. Of course, he could have just strolled into the building, snap his fingers near the right people, but where's the fun in that? Oddly enough, the paper trails he leaves behind are real, very real, and the name he makes for himself in the world of dreamsharing isn't just based on rumours. There's a sprinkle of reality in there too.

It takes two days of pacing before he receives a phone call from Belinda the secretary, inviting him for a job interview. The poor woman doesn't even know what hit her, doesn't even know why she suddenly decided to call this Mr F. A. Eames, surely he wasn't at the top of her pile when she started calling around for suitable candidates? She's not even sure if she's seen his application before, and she knows she goes through them religiously. "I'll be there," he says when she tells him the time of his interview. "Oh, okay," she replies, and hangs up.

Interview or not, he'll definitely get hired. Eames smiles to himself.

"Your resume is quite impressive," Mr Bangle from HR says, his hair so neatly divided he must have used a ruler while combing his hair. He raises an eyebrow at some of the experience listed on the resume Eames has kindly provided, but doesn't comment much further. "Why do you think you will fit in this position at Fischer-Morrow?" he asks instead.

"Well," Eames drawls, and hangs up a story about how the energy market has always intrigued him, et cetera et cetera. He knows job interviews don't quite work that way, but people will always hear what they want to hear anyway. Especially when it concerns him.

"Excellent," Mr Bangle says, when they're at the door shaking hands. "Formally, we will still have to review all the other candidates, but I can assure you, I will put in a good word for you." Eames thanks him again and takes his leave, waving to the secretary who shakily waves back on his way out.

With all of that done, the rest of his work here is practically a piece of cake. All Eames has to do is go in to work, and observe the people around him while he remains in the background himself. Considering other people apparently like putting themselves in Browning's line of fire, he succeeds fairly well. At the end of the day, who really remembers the man sitting in the corner, quietly making notes?

There's just one thing; he hadn't expected Robert Fischer to be this young. Standing next to his father's sick bed, he looks like a boy who's trying to look grown up in a fashionable suit. As if those neatly pressed trousers, tie and jacket are the only thing keeping him together right now. He must feel as the only young man in existence with the weight of the world resting upon his shoulders. Eames watches him leave work every day with quick, resolute steps, looking absolutely drained. Meanwhile, his godfather, Browning tries to show Fischer he cares about him and that he wants to help him, but the only thing he succeeds in is making Fischer more stressed He makes him more aware that there are decisions to make that Fischer would rather not make, but has to.

And during their long-winded conversations about how to go on with the company and what will happen, Maurice Fischer lies inbetween the two, completely missing out on what's going on. Even if Fischer tries to show care for his father, there never seems to have been much reciprocation. Eames is more than ready to believe the rumours about their relationship having been strained now.

After three weeks of careful watching, observing and practicing in his hotel room, he deems himself ready to forge Peter Browning. All he needs now is a PASIV to see if he can succeed in forging him in the dreamworld. If all goes well, by the time he's on his plane to Paris, those at Fischer-Morrow won't remember him having been there at all, completely undisturbed by the empty seat next to the door.

~*~

The second Eames walks into the warehouse, his attention is drawn to Arthur, who doesn't notice, or acknowledge Eames coming in. Instead he calmly continues reviewing the information on his desk, re-arranging the papers in a more pleasing sequence than they previously were. While Eames settles in, Yusuf catches him up on the compounds he's currently using, and the effects they could have on him attempting to forge. During the time he's talking Eames' eyes follow Arthur as he walks across the warehouse floor; as he talks to Cobb; as he leans forward over the model that Ariadne built of the level he has to dream up. Yusuf follows his gaze when Eames doesn't reply to his question, and sighs. "Don't tell me you're still pining."

Eames looks away, distracted. "I'm not pining," he insists. Yusuf raises an eyebrow, as if to say, 'really?' Eames ignores the continuous jabs from him from then on, assuring himself that all this is is being relieved at seeing a former coworker, a friend. But when he catches himself staring, lost in thought, he wonders ifhe'll believe anything his mind feeds him.

Ever since he's met Arthur, years ago, he's had a soft spot for him. Arthur who prefers to think inside the box; Arthur who likes to hold on to old-fashioned ideas and morals; who wishes things would stay the same. Eames likes that Arthur. He changes too often himself to stay grounded in the same ideas and beliefs, but Arthur, he's a constant. He's someone who will always return, yet never changes. The man standing across the room has always been like this. Tall, dark hair, darker eyes, with expertly long fingers. Eames smiles to himself. Even though Arthur really has absolutely no imagination, he manages to bring it with style.

At the end of another long working day, it's just Eames practicing his forge, and Arthur testing out one of Yusuf's compounds, while their chemist watches the two of them sleep. But Yusuf is long gone when Eames wakes from his slumber, blinking the sleep out of his eyes. Arthur is sitting at his desk, rubbing his sleeves absently while he catapults pencils over Eames' face into the wall next to the chair, where they clatter to the floor. Eames watches as another pencil sails straight over his nose, eyes drifting to Arthur who is boredly trying to find more pencils to abuse.

He stretches while he sits up, and feels his muscles complain in the back of his neck from lying in the same position for too long. Arthur watches him from beside his desk, feet almost dangling when he tilts his chair backwards. His eyes follow Eames' movement, but he makes no indication to get up himself, instead twirling a pen between his fingers. By this time, Eames has locked up the PASIV device and put it away. He holds his jacket in one hand and turns to Arthur before he leaves, "You weren't planning on staying here, were you?" he asks him, an eyebrow raised.

Arthur's chair creaks when he stands up, and while he gathers the dropped pencils he says, "I wasn't planning to, no." He slips his arms into the sleeves of his own coat, before sliding his hands into his pockets and smiling at Eames. "I was just waiting for an invitation."

Arthur locks the warehouse door behind them, and Eames keeps an eye on the surrounding, looking at Arthur from the corner of his eye. Just in his peripheral vision, he catches movement that's not quite there, almost invisible, as if it doesn't want to be there – but when he turns his head fully, it's gone. Whether it's a figment of his imagination or not, the odd appearances he always notices around Arthur strengthen the idea that they are not that different from each other.

They stroll through Parisian streets, and the setting sun is casting long shadows on the pavement, their own stretching out behind them, impossibly tall.

In the end, it doesn't matter where they end up. They decide to have dinner in a tiny restaurant, and Eames watches the candlelight play tricks on Arthur's face, and how he uses his hands as he talks. He catches Eames looking, once, and stops talking in the middle of a sentence, fork halfway to his mouth. They eye each other for a moment. Eames glances down at his plate and Arthur swallows the mouthful on his fork, silence settling around them comfortably.

Eames makes it a point to form no attachments, to anyone or anything. There are no places to his name, no people who can tell the story of Eames: who he was, who he could become, and all the details inbetween. No one but Arthur, that is. There's no one he truly trusts enough to keep that secret, but when he watches Arthur sitting across the table, under which they keep bumping knees, he knows there is no one who can better keep his mouth shut than Arthur.

After dinner, they make a stop at one of their hotel rooms – Arthur's, because if Eames is honest he doesn't really have a hotel room, just an apartment belonging to some bloke who barely spends any time there – and the stop turns into something more than just having the intentioned drink. But Eames can't find it within himself to complain, not with Arthur's mouth on his own, his thumbs hooked through Eames' belt hoops.

Eames loosens Arthur's tie, and they break apart long enough for Arthur to pull his tie over his head, and let his jacket slide to the floor. His lips ghost over Eames' ear, breath hot, teeth sharp at the edge of the shell. Eames keeps himself busy by opening the buttons on Arthur's waistcoat, his dress shirt, his trousers. He sinks unto his knees, while Arthur slides his braces off his shoulders, and smiles down at him, his fingers brushing through Eames' hair. Eames holds both hands steady on Arthur's hips while he flicks his tongue, and Arthur's hands tighten onto his scalp, his back arching and hips pushing forward. Eames licks his lips, and looks up, to where Arthur has his eyes closed and breathes in through his nose deeply, once, twice. Eames thinks, he's gorgeous, come undone, reached the point of trembling right in front of him.

He brings up his arm right around Arthur's waist, and Arthur's hands drop to his shoulders. He watches Eames though half-lidded eyes, and Eames is awkwardly on one knee, halfway through standing up; they stumble right into each other and his nose bumps into Arthur's stomach, and a rumbling laugh escapes from Arthur's mouth that echoes through the room. He pulls Eames up by the arms, and before Eames can even catch his breath Arthur catches their lips together again, this time much more ferociously. Arthur's warm hands tug on his shirt; a pink thing he would have called a monstrosity on any other day. Eames shrugs the shirt off, allowing his own hands to roam until he feels the rim of the bed at the back of his knees, and Arthur pushes him forward until he's stradling his hips.

Eames runs a hand up Arthur's side, surprised by how his skin is such a ghostly white, he can barely believe it's not see through. But the weight pressing him down into the mattress; the hands undoing his belt buckle, they keep him from believing Arthur could disappear any minute, fade into moments that passed. The sharp sound of the metal on his belt pulls him back into reality, where Arthur is shimmying off his trousers and exposing flesh. Eames toes off his shoes and pulls up his legs far enough so when Arthur leans back, he can peel of his socks, one by one, keeping his hands on the soles of Eames' feet. He slowly leans forward, without letting go of Eames' feet, catches his lips, and gradually trails down from there. Mischievously he looks up through his lashes, and Eames finds himself grinning back, until his mouth shifts into a wide 'Oh' that he can barely suppress saying out loud, a notion Arthur realises with his nose buried into curls and his mouth splitting into a grin.

Eames graps at the sheets surrounding them, his feet push against Arthur's suddenly hot hips, and the ceiling explodes intp a rainbow of colours, where all of them and none of them exist at the same time, and Arthur's hands are the only thing keeping him down.

He shudders, takes a deep breath, and Arthur lifts his head, lazily trailing his fingers over Eames' stomach, torso, neck, until they come to rest on his jaw. His hair is damp when Eames runs his fingers through it, and locks flop over Arthur's forehead. Out of breath, Eames chuckles, and presses a kiss against those locks. He can feel Arthur grinning against his cheek.

"Come on," Eames says, softer than he had intended, and they get themselves together, settled properly against the pillows. Arthur's breath is warm against is his neck, and Eames closes his eyes, pulling Arthur close. Time to dream.

~*~

It's not that Eames needs to sleep, but he has picked up the habit over the years. He likes it, so why not? When he closes his eyes and can feel himself slipping away, he can convince himself that he's not just among humans, he's one of them. Opening his mind to dreams, the spontaneity of it or, as Yusuf sometimes liked to call it, the great unknown of the subconscious. Of course, that had been before the discovery of dreamshare. Eames could say he liked the unpredictability of his own subconscious, but he especially held a fondness for that of others.

It did not seem that long ago that he had leant forward over a dormant body, hot air brushing across his cheek, eyelids of the subject of his attention twitching, continuing to sleep, unaware that they are being watched. Eames is just a spectator to the circus of his subject's mind, and while he won't deny spinning his own little twist on the sweetest of dreams, he usually does nothing more than that. Yusuf brew the special concoction of what they had called the dreamsleep, back in the day, and if he'd asked for it too often, Eames is sure Yusuf would at least have accused him of being incorrigible (which Eames certainly wouldn't deny).

The arrival of dreamshare, however, had brought a stop to that. Yusuf, who had always been seen as the master of ingredients, the man who could give access to the world so few wished to tread, had been overrun by science. Even though Eames still recommends him to the extractors he works with, he knows he doesn't spend half the time he used to tracking the chemist down, trying to find out if he has any new potions to share. If he wants to dream today, there's always Somnacin.

But sometimes, when he can't help himself, he prefers the bitter drink Yusuf provides over the needle in his wrist. He can lay his head back and stop worrying about Limbo, or going deeper, or even about having to extract. These dreams are, simply put, a way of reading a person that no other method can provide, while the combination of the dreammachine and its chemicals leave an artificial aftertaste, as if that experience is simply not real enough.

He watches Arthur sleep for a while before getting up from the bed, being careful not to wake the other man who was buried in the crook of his arm. He does need his sleep. He walks through the room, half-heartedly picks up some hapharzardly clothes thrown on the floor, and stops at the window. He knows he has all the time in the world, and he calmly lights a cigarette, watches the flame lick the bud before it alights. He looks at the street down below, listens to the quiet edge of the night, the background noise of Paris fading away into the shadows across the street. The cigarette smoke trails towards the ceiling, visible in the yellow light of the lantarns standing outside on the streets.

The scene reminds him of what life used to be like, and while his eyes follow the smoke trail, he remembers, and glances back to Arthur in the bed. They had first met each other man in a smoky bar, years before. The room had been dimly lit, and if it hadn't been for the sharp look sent his way the moment he stepped inside, he wasn't sure if he would have noticed Arthur at all. But the moment he had layed eyes on him, Eames had been intrigued, especially by that dark gaze that seemed to look straight through him.

He knew now that it had been far too easy to get Arthur alone, and it should've set off the bad feeling he usually got, that settled in his gut when he knew something was wrong. So, he bragged some, and he left some to the imagination, and even after that, it had been simple to get Arthur to come with him and put something in his drink. He had fallen asleep soon afterward. His head had been tilted back awkwardly, leaving his throat exposed. Musing over the past, Eames knew that Arthur still looked the same as the very day he'd met him. Perhaps a bit more jaded on the inside, but on the outside, he was still the same man he had first met in that bar.

Eames flicked his cigarette butt out of the window and left it open, laying back down on the bed next to Arthur. "Just what is going on in your mind?" he murmured, looking at Arthur's sleeping face. "What is it that you dream about?" Curiousity still plagued his thoughts, despite the fact that he knew this Arthur. His dreams were as enigmatic as they had been that first time, when he hadn't even known his name. Once upon a time, Arthur had simply been someone new to corrupt.

He had gone to sleep in a chair across Arthur's that night, ready to find out the man's deepest secrets – blackmail had more monetary value than some people were willing to admit, and with the way Arthur had dressed, he had known he would be able to fill his pockets for quite some time. Eames had swallowed down some ofthe potion that was as clear as water before laying back himself, and his eyes had slipped shut while his thoughts ran over the things he could do with that amount of money.

Dreams aren't quite like the world they live in; they're complex and layered, but at the same time can be completely nonsensical. Needless to say, when he fell asleep he found something strangely unusual in Arthur's dreams. From the moment he had woke up, he had walked around with a sense of familiarity that he couldn't quite place. He knew he seen this dreamscape before, but he couldn't shake off the feeling that he knew this place, that he had had this dream in the past.

"I'm not particularly fond of people who stick their nose in places where it doesn't belong," a voice had said, and Eames had turned his head. The voice had been Arthur -- in a strange, dismembered sort of way. The sound didn't seem to come from his mouth, but somewhere far above and around them.

"You knew from the moment you saw me, didn't you?" Eames had said. Arthur had smiled at him, eyes shining bright.

They played a few rounds of cards in the dream, introduced themselves over it, and this was how Eames had come to know Arthur No Last Name (if Arthur wasn't his last name, you could never tell). That day he had woken up, knowing he may very well have found a partner in crime. And a delightful partner Arthur had been; Eames knowingly grinned to himself.

With his head turned on his pillow, Eames watches the Arthur in the present sleep, his head moved slightly in Eames' direction. Eames licks his lips, and a bitter taste swirls around in his mouth. Within seconds, Eames can feel himself falling away.

"I don't remember inviting you here," Arthur says next to him. They're sitting in a booth in a restaurant, and Arthur is perfectly put together in his dreams.

"I didn't think I'd to be," Eames says, signalling a waiter over.

"I suppose I shouldn't even bother giving you a key." Arthur shakes his head, but smiles anyway. His expression turns serious soon enough, though, as he knows no one else will be able to hear his words here. "This job... this is it, isn't it?"

"That depends on what you think "it" is," Eames says and grimaces after he sips from his wine. Arthur has no taste in proper alcoholic drinks, however sophisticated he looks, and it reflects. "Just because we're attempting an inception doesn't mean it will innovate the industry. But we're already dreaming, Arthur," he gestures around him, "we've been able to for so long, and now they can, too."

Arthur leans closer to him, his lips close to his ear. "As long as you don't get jealous because you have to share me in dreams."

~*~

Several weeks later, Eames is lying on his bed, studying patterns on the ceiling, letting his mind wander. It's late at night, and even though the curtains are closed, the light from outside manages to create blocks of light on the floor, a work of art in itself. He's tired; he can feel it the way his body drags him down, how his eyes struggle not to close even when he's supposed to be wide awake. But he can afford to sleep today; a nice dreamless sleep, just for himself. Most of the preparation has been done, he knows what his role is, knows how to act, talk, eat while forging; he could probably pretend to be Peter Browning in his sleep, irony permitted. All the signs point toward the inception going off without a hitch, and while Eames personally likes a job of which the only outcome can be success, he knows there's a possibility something, anything, could still go wrong.

He's just allowed his eyes to fall shut when there's a knock at his door; sharp, only once, then it's quiet. He isn't expecting anyone, not at this time of the night, anyway, unless someone thought it'd be fun to surprise him with a hooker.

He drags himself off the bed, and sluggishly walks to the door. He's too tired to deal with anything work-related now.

When Eames opens the door, he is surprised to see Arthur standing there. "Arthur," he says, "what a surprise." Arthur isn't one for late night visits, at least not to Eames' own bedroom, and especially not when he hasn't been invited there. Yet Arthur is here, half leaning against the doorway, looking exhausted, and as if he'd rather be somewhere else, like his own hotel room with his head on a pillow.

"I need to talk to you," he says, "it's urgent."

"Couldn't you have talked to Cobb about it, then?" Eames asks, but still holds the door open for him. Arthur only shakes his head and steps inside. Eames smiles, mostly to himself. Arthur has never been one for dawdling, really, always direct, always straight to the point. Eames thinks he might like that the most about him.

Arthur puts his bag on the nightstand in the corner, and takes out a few papers. When Eames steps closer, he hands them over. "I wasn't sure at first," Arthur starts, "but if what that paper says is true, it could seriously mess up the job." Eames looks up, surprised. He'd thought he'd made sure everything had been taken care of, but then Arthur always takes care of the details. He focusses on the paper again. "I just went by a hunch," Arthur says, "and I wouldn't usually have followed it, but..." He gestures to the papers in Eames' hands. "I don't usually research this kind of thing, because it's not necessary in our line of work. The outcome brings up notions we hadn't considered, and we can be in serious trouble."

Eames reads, and reads, and reads. All of the papers are about Robert Fischer. Details about him, details people have put away, or forgotten, or who knows what else. Birth records, hospital visitations, paper clippings. After reading through the last one that dates back more then twenty years, he looks up. "Are you sure?" he says, feeling anxiety bubble up in his chest. It's not a pleasant feeling, mostly because he already knows the answer.

"Even if he is," Eames says, putting the feeling of dread away for now, "it doesn't mean it will jeopardise the operation. For all we know, he's not even aware of it himself. I've studied Fischer, Arthur, and I don't think he'd act the way he did, if he knew. And if he's not undercover, he may have forgotten about it himself. That's entirely possible."

Arthur hesitates to answer, and at last he says, "Should we tell Cobb?" The last time Eames had seen Arthur this uncomfortable, it hadn't ended well for either of them.

"I don't think we should," he says, rubbing a hand over his face while he considers all the options they have. "We can't tell him, he can't know about it. He might end up sabotaging the plan himself, without even knowing it."

"Right," Arthur says, as if he's only just now thought of it himself. They're both a bit slow tonight, heavy with sleep and who knows what else. Arthur reaches for the papers to take them back from Eames. Before he knows it, Eames has watched him leave, back sliding around the door inconspicuously; the door closes with a soft click, and Arthur in Eames' hotel room has turned into another memory.

Despite the late hour, it's good to have the information, Eames thinks, because there is no doubt about it. Robert Fischer is a changeling.

~*~

Eames is in New York City when he calls Cobb from his hotel room; his suitcase contents lying half-spread out over the bed, and half actually in the case. He plans to only say what's absolutely necessary -- Cobb is just a coworker, they're not exactly on friendly terms, and he doesn't have much time to elaborate. Eames has plans to go to London, later this day.

Cobb picks up at the second ring, sooner than he expects. "Cobb," he greets him, making an effort to sound as pleasant as possible.

"Eames!" Cobb sounds surprised. "I hadn't expected you to call."

Eames paces back and forth in his hotel room, eyes roaming over the painting hanging over the bed; he's studied the fruit bowl with just an an apple and a banana one too many times already. "I just wanted to know if you and the kids were all right." If he's honest, he's more concerned about the kids than Cobb, after that stunt he pulled in the first level of the dream.

"No, we're doing okay," Cobb says, "still getting back into a routine, of sorts. It feels strange, being back home after so long."

"That's normal," Eames comments, trying to decide on whether to throw the beige shirt out of his suitcase, or the lavender one.

"And you would know?" Cobb sounds amused; Eames can hear him messing around with kitchen appliances.

"I know a lot of things," Eames replies, and decides to keep the beige one.

"Sure." The conversation is suddenly stilted, and awkward. Cobb continues, despite this. "Look, you wouldn't have some information on Fischer, would? I haven't heard a thing since I left the plane, and Arthur doesn't pick up his phone, and there has been no indication of anything going on with the company on the news.”

"I wouldn't have expected it, not yet anyway," Eames says, "but the inception has taken, though, it seems. A couple of my sources are saying Fischer has been very agitated about something the last couple of weeks. But it's out of our hands now. Fischer will have to do the rest himself.”

"There's just one thing I don't understand..." Cobb slowly says, sounding thoughtful. "How could Fischer have been militarised? I know Arthur did a thorough background check, he always does, but he didn't catch this?"

Eames freezes in his steps, and thinks of the night Arthur showed up at his hotel room, worried that what he'd found would ruin everything. “Arthur knew what he was doing."

On the other end of the line, he hears Cobb taking a deep breath before he asks, “Did Arthur know Fischer was militarised, or not?”

"He didn't know about it, okay?” Eames runs a hand through his hair. “There's no way he could've predited it.”

“Something was wrong with Fischer, wasn't there?” Eames' blood runs cold. There is no fucking way Cobb would know about it. No one had told him.

“Yes,” he eventually say, “there was.”

Eames tries to think of a simple explanation about Fischer, and what has happened. "So, imagine you have a friend," he tries, "and something happens to this friend. You know something happened to them, but they don't, because they don't remember. Either because it's too long ago, or because they have forgotten – the reason why isn't really important here. Now, subconsciously, this event still has an impact on this person. If you would go into their dream, it's possible there would be remnants of the events, scattered across the dreamspace. The thing is, that part is entirely guesswork. You won't actually know until you enter the subject's dream yourself. The chance of something actually happening is quite small, and within most dreams, it's not a problem, because you die when you wake up. But this wasn't the case when we delved into Fischer's mind."

"You're saying something happened to Fischer that he doesn't remember, and that caused his subconscious to react that way?" Cobb sounds incredulous, and Eames can't blame him for that. He knows it sounds crazy, and he would have had trouble believing it himself, if he hadn't seen it up close a couple of times.

"Precisely."

"So what was happened to cause the militarisation in the first place?"

Eames bites his lip, and sits down on the bed, right on top of the lavender shirt. He could lie. Cobb wouldn't know any better, and he would save Arthur the trouble of dealing with an angry architect slash father. But if Cobb is persistent enough (which he always is), Eames knows he could find out that he lied. And after everything that's happened to the guy, lying is the last thing he should do if he wasn't to keep his trust.

"Fischer isn't exactly... human."

It's quiet on the other end of the line; he can hear Cobb breathing. "He looked human to me."

"Of course he looks human," Eames says, "it wouldn't be a very good replacement if he didn't, now would he?" He sighs. "Besides, he practically is human nowadays, he doesn't remember being anything else. So yes, we did incept Robert Fischer, albeit a not very human one."

"But what happened to the real one?"

"Twenty years ago, the real Robert Fischer was stolen from his crib, and someone, or rather something, took his place."

"Jesus Christ," Cobb says, and Eames purses his lips while he lifts his eyes towards the ceiling. "Is he still alive? The real one, I mean."

"I have no idea. No one really knows what happens with the taken children. They just disappear, never to be heard of again."

"How come you don't hear about this in the media, the news? Didn't his parents notice?"

"It is there, sometimes. Arthur managed to dig some stuff up on Fischer. You just have to know what you're looking for. And yeah, sometimes the parents notice. Sometimes they don't. Most of the time, the replacement child is sickly, unused to human contact."

He imagines Cobb sinking down in a chair, trying to process all of this information. "So both you and Arthur know about things like this? Why hasn't he ever mentioned it to me?"

"You have to understand that this already borders on telling secrets that aren't mine to share, Cobb. There are more things out there than you realise. This is just one of them. If I told you much more, Arthur would kill me. Very slowly," he adds, to emphasise his point.

"I just don't understand why he– why you haven't told me before? I wouldn't have told anyone." Of course, Eames thinks to himself, of course he wouldn't have. Because no one ever tells. No matter how many promises they made, they always end up telling someone. Most people simply don't want to hear there's more than they know of, because they haven't seen it for themselves. Like Cobb doesn't want to hear that Arthur didn't share everything with him, that they weren't as close as he had thought they were. Arthur would never tell him that, though. And Cobb is, without a doubt, one of the most entertaining people Eames has shared this secret with this decade. (Although the time his then girlfriend back in the seventies tried to shove him out of a window when he'd tried to tell her had been entertaining too.)

"I have my reasons," Eames says. "As for Arthur, you'd have to ask him yourself. Maybe he could tell you about Mal." Eames always realises that maybe, he should've kept his mouth shut a fraction of a second too late.

"What does Mal have to do with this? She's dead, Eames. What's left to tell? Or are you telling me she was like Fischer, that she was replaced with someone else? That the woman I married was never the true Mal?"

"No, no," Eames quickly says – he already regrets mentioning Mal in the first place. "It's– she wasn't like that, not at all."

"Then what?" Cobb sounds exasparated, but seeing as he didn't know as much about his wife as he thought he did, Eames thinks this is fair enough. "You call me, and tell me all these things that make no sense at all! Are you even human, is Arthur? Was Mal? Everything we did, was it one big lie?"

"She loved you, with all her heart and more." Eames closes his eyes. Why couldn't Arthur have answered Cobb's calls? He's much better at this than Eames ever will be, he just gets tired and annoyed.

"If Mal was part of this, why didn't she tell me? She would've, I know she would've. We didn't lie to each other. We... we loved each other, Eames. Why would she lie to me?"

"She still wouldn't have told you, Cobb. She loved you, but if you had known, you might not have loved that part of her. And that's partially why she didn't tell you. Not to intentionally lie to you."

He expects Cobb to hang up by now, but he's still there, "Is there anything else you'd still like to share?" Cobb sounds bitter. "Anything else she hid from me, that you feel compelled to tell me?"

"There's enough," Eames says, and sighs. However much Mal would have wanted to share her life, her Other life, with her husband, he wouldn't have been able to understand. Just like he wouldn't be able to understand that, even if her physical manifestation had gone, didn't mean she was gone forever. She lingers. And that was precisely why he can't tell Cobb, because he has to move on, for his sake, for his children. Mal is untouchable, again.

"I'm going to call Arthur," Cobb says, and this time he does hang up. Eames is surprised he even announces it before he does it, and throws his mobile on the matrass, next to a pair of trousers. It always could've gone worse, he reckons. (After nearly throwing him out of their three story high flat, his girlfriend (well, ex-girlfriend by then) stabbed him three times in the chest. He died, and when he woke up, he had had a hard time explaining it when she had been crying over his body. At the time he'd thought that maybe, it would be romantic to say, as long as you think of me, I'll be there. Literally.)

Eames hopes Arthur won't have his head for telling Cobb, but the man did deserve some honesty after all those lies. He continues to pack his suitcase, and does end up taking the lavender shirt with him after he brushes out some of the folds.


	3. Ariadne

  
When Ariadne steps out of the airport, it feels like she can finally release the deep breath she's been holding since she boarded the plane in Sydney. They've done it. They've actually completed an inception. Ariadne feels a rush of pride at having been part of such a historical moment in dream history. There's nothing out there now that can still surprise her, not when she's been shot at, shot at other people herself, plunged off a building and nearly drowned, all in the timespan of one day. Or should she say several dreams.

For the first few days, she sits in her hotel room, quietly, fearful that if she even opens her mouth, all secrets will come spilling out to whoever is willing to listen. She checks her totem and takes a deep breath. Not a dream. Still reality. She stares at the traffic down below, far below, seemingly tiny, insignificant, to what they have accomplished just a mere four days ago. How is it even possible that those people are able to live their lives, not wondering about what else is out there? Ariadne knows it's only been several days, but already she longs to dream again; that slight sensation of weightlessness when you're walking through your own creation, the metallic aftertaste that lingers in her mouth for hours, reminding her of what she's just done. She misses all of it, yet she knows she can't have it. Not right now.

She contemplates about what to do next. Should she go back to Paris? Arthur had said to lay low for a while, can she just go back and pretend nothing ever happened? She nearly bites at her fingernails, trying to come to a decision. Paris means studying, which means leaving dreaming behind. But she's not sure what staying here will do for her either. Arthur said he would contact her, once it was safe to do so. He gave her careful instructions about what to do, but especially about what not to do. One of these things is calling Dom Cobb.

Her fingers itch every time she sees her phone; she wants to know so badly it almost hurts. There are so many questions she'd ask him, how are his kids, is he all right, has he told anyone, did he speak to Arthur, is everyone else safe? She has so many of them, but there's no one here to answer.

She takes another week, thinking she might as well now that she's here. She likes playing the tourist, and buys a cheap camera with which makes pictures of monumental buildings. At least that still manages to make her smile. Even if she never manages to design anything quite as magnificent as she did in that dream, she can settle for this. At the end of the day every day, though, she hates going back to her room. It's become uninviting, without anyone there waiting for her. She'll have to go back soon, she decides. No one has contacted her, and she won't contact anyone either – at least she tries not to.

On a Sunday, late in the afternoon, she returns to her hotel room, turns the key in the lock, opens the door and promptly steps into Arthur's personal space. "Holy crap," she says, and he steps away, closing the door behind her. "Wow," she says, for good measure, "do you always do that, appear out of nowhere?"

"It wasn't nowhere," he says, playfully, "I was waiting for you, right here. But I'm sorry if I scared you."

She mutters something to herself, and Arthur's smile grows. "Come on," he says, "I know you just got back, but I wanted to show you something."

Before she knows it, he's taken a hold of her hand, and the door is opened and closed again. He takes her down stairs, streets, mucky alleyways that have probably seen better days; through doors and into basements that lead back into streets, which should definitely not be possible. Ariadne thinks, Arthur must be a walking paradox. There's no other explanation for it. You can't go down and end up somewhere, well, up. It doesn't make sense, any of it. Did she fall asleep on the bus back to her hotel?

Arthur stops, suddenly, in the middle of a busy street. At the end of it there's a small market, where people – is that blue hair? – are trying to drive down the prices of the goods offered. She can't see what they're selling, but by now she's quite sure that isn't cabbage. She's also not sure if they're even still in LA. "Where are we?" she asks, quietly.

Arthur smiles down at her, looks proud at the fact he can show her this place. "This," he says, "is my home."

Ariadne glances around, takes in the tall people that tower even over Arthur; the men in waistcoats and pointy beards who are having a discussion about astronomy and the effects of the planets on growing mushrooms. Ariadne is not quite sure if her ears are working correctly. "What is this place?" she asks, her wonder growing. "This isn't a dream, is it?"

"Nope," Arthur says, and he starts walking again, although this time he hasslowed down, "this place is just as real as you and I are."

"But how is that even possible?"

"Check your totem," he says, and he waits patiently while she does. When she looks up to him for an explanation when it tells her this is all very real, he starts talking again.

"This is a separate reality," Arthur explains, and ignores her raised eyebrows, "which is connected to the Earthly plane, yours, in several places, where you can access it. Most people there call it the Other, but it seems quite a redundant name to me."

What Arthur is saying makes sense, if she ignores all of the crazy things that have happened in the time span of just half an hour, but she's still not sure if this isn't some sort of practical joke, one to initiate new dreamers into the community. "Why did you take me here?" she asks, very carefully holding on to his hand. She doesn't want to lose him in this crowd of strange people. He allows her to, gives her hand an encouraging squeeze.

"I wanted to show you dreaming isn't everything, that there are always new things to discover in the waking world. Such as this." He gestures with his free hand. "I didn't want you to forget that feeling you have when you discover something for the first time."

"I won't," she said, but she doesn't really understand what he means. "Dreaming is still tempting, though." Arthur laughs, and it's a pleasant sound to her ears. It's the first time she's seen him this comfortable. This really must be his home, however weird it may seem to her.

"Don't worry," Arthur says, "most of your co-workers have the same problem." But then his expression gets serious, and his smile is sad. "That's what happened to the Cobbs. They didn't know there was a limit to how far you could go. They lost themselves in it," he continues, "and only when... only when Mal died did reality become important again. That was when Dom finally came back, to me, to us, to the world. I don't want you to make the same mistakes they did." She knows what he's asking, she knows why he's asking it, because even if it's been a year, or two years, or three years since Mal died, she realises he's still hurting over it. They must've been close, she quietly concludes. But even then, even though she really wants to, she can't promise him a dream will never manage to win her over, that it will keep her blind-sided with no one to pull her back.

He looks down at her, and it's as if he's reading her mind, can see her deepest secrets, what she's just thought– t he thought of it brings up something else entirely.

"You said this was your home," she says, glancing around her once more. In his suit, neatly pressed as ever, Arthur looks remarkably out of place between all these strange people. "Do you..." she doesn't quite know how to phrase her question; at least not without offending him, she fears. Thankfully, Arthur seems rather good at guessing what she wants to know.

"Don't worry," he says, "what you see, it's based in truth. I've been like this for a very long time now." She wonders, does he even age – some days he looks incredibly young, could maybe even pass for fresh out of college if he'd dress the part. If she would have to guess, she'd say he was barely a day over twenty-five, at the most.

Yet when she looks him in the eyes, there's something in there that doesn't exist when she looks at her peers. Some kind of wisdom, knowledge, which most people still would have to discover at that age. Most people have a certain unawareness about them, as if they're sleeping with their eyes open. And now that her own eyes have been opened, maybe she can say she's truly awake now.

"I wanted to take you somewhere here," Arthur says, "because I actually did bring you here for a specific reason."

"So you're not just showing off?" she teases, punching him lightly in the shoulder. "Not everyone just hides a secret world in their basement."

He laughs again, and shakes his head. "I'll take it you're still up for it?" She nods and he seems satisfied. "It's not just this place, though," he says, "or rather, it is one place. It encompasses more than what we would normally describe a city as, because it his no limits, and on some days it never seems to end. You can say that with every different access point, it looks different." He smiles apologetically.

"As if it is a different city?" she tries.

"No, not a different one, it's still the same one, only seen from a different perspective. You'll see when we get there. And in a place like this, well, we always have more to explore."

It's her turn to laugh now. "Even more? What, do you have Narnia hidden in a closet somewhere?"

Arthur takes her hand again, and she thinks about how nice it is, that he wants to keep her safe. "How are the others?" she asks, deeming it safe to talk about them. "Have you talked to anyone?"

"Dom is all right," he says, "I still can't quite believe he's back home, with his children. He called me twice when he thought he was dreaming, but he's getting better, although he has been acting strange. I think Yusuf went home immediately after the inception, and Eames... I know he went to London a few days ago, but I don't know if he's still there. He said he had some business to do." Even after working with him, it stil surprises Ariadne how much Arthur knows about everyone, where they are, what they're doing. Was he keeping tabs on her as well, she finds herself thinking.

“What about Fischer?” she asks. “Has the inception had any effect yet?"

"No absolute signs of it yet, although he has been in quite a few meetings, especially in the last few weeks. But he'll be all right, and I'm keeping an eye on him, just in case." It's what Arthur always does, she supposes, taking care of the last few details, making sure everyone has ended up okay, most specifically not in jail. That's his job as a point man, she thinks, and he's damn good at it, if she may say so herself.

"Did you find out?" she asks quietly. "I mean, you didn't know he was militarised, no one knew. Did you find out afterward?"

"It's complicated," Arthur says at first, and she thinks he won't go into it any further, so she presses on.

"Is he like you?" She doesn't mean to pry, not really. It's just that these days, her curiosity seems to be unsatiable, and there's nothing she can do, except feed it.

"Not completely," Arthur says at last, after being quiet for some time, "he doesn't know about this place. As far as I know, he's never been here before. Even if he has, he might not have realised he was part of it. The militarisation he had was very strong, and it came unexpectedly. We couldn't have known his mind would defend itself that way, especially if he did it subconsciously."

"He had no training, whatsoever?" she asks, flabbergasted. While doing the preliminary work at the warehouse, Arthur had insisted to build some walls inside her mind, in case something would go wrong. And even with the knowledge she had, her mind wasn't like that of Fischer's, who's defenses were pulled up so high you needed a ladder to look over the wall.

"You couldn't have known about it," she tries to assure him.

"I should've expected it," Arthur replies shortly, and he doesn't seem to be willing to go much further into the subject. He must hate failing, she thinks, just as much as the rest of them don't particularly like feeling like a failure.

She looks at her feet to distract herself from feeling bad, and she knows she looked down for just for a split second, during which she can feel Arthur's hand slipping out of her own, as if he's disintegrating into sand. When she looks up, he's not there. No Arthur, not anywhere. With her height it's impossible to gaze over the crowd, to try and spot the only familiar face in this place. She tries calling out his name, but when there's no reply, Ariadne starts moving. She doesn't know anyone here, landmarks, the place Arthur wanted to take her to, or even how to get back to her hotel room. This isn't her world.

Ariadne doesn't know where she's going, not really, just following her feet, trying not to look too many people in the eye here. She's not paying attention, and tries to remember the way she walked with Arthur, tracing their steps, when she walks straight into someone, and almost loses her balance.

"I'm sorry–” she starts, just managing to keep herself upright with the help of a steadying hand.

"It's all right, love." Ariadne looks up, startled, and almost wants to cry out with joy at the familiar face.

"Eames! What are you– I mean, why are you– Arthur said you were in London."

"One question at a time, please, although I am in London." That earns him a strange look, but he doesn't elaborate, even though he does smile mischievously. It's only when he places his hand on her shoulder, again, that she realises her heart is still beating furiously, and she wills herself to calm down. "Arthur took you here?" Eames asks, and she nods. He looks around and she realises he's trying to find him. "Then where the bloody hell is he? He can't just leave you here by yourself."

"I don't know," she says, "I lost him. He was suddenly gone, from one second to another. As if he was never even there."

Eames sighs, and looks a little exasparated. Ariadne feels embarassed about even needing his help, so she hopes he won't mind, too much. "Well, it's a good thing you found me then, isn't it?" He takes along to the side of the street, where they aren't as bothered by the people passing through, and he pulls his cell phone out of his pocket, the same one she's seen him use while preparing the inception job. Do cell phones even work here? she tries to ask, but he raises a finger to his lips.

"Arthur!" he says cheerfully when he picks up. "You'd never guess who I just ran into!" They talk back and forth for a little while, and Eames says things like, "She's fine," and, "I'll look after her," and even "Don't you worry." He's smiling while they're talking, though, and even if during the inception job Ariadne had the impression they didn't get along very well, she's starting to doubt herself now. Apparently, this world is something they share. "I'll meet you at the regular spot? Good," is how Eames ends the conversation, and he puts his phone back into his pocket. "Now," he says to her, "where were we?"

When she compares the way Arthur and Eames have lead her around this place so far, she notices just how different they are from one another. Arthur is straightforward in his explanations, always to the point, taking care of the fact that everything he says is relevant to the conversation. Eames, on the other hand, seems to get derailed in his own stories just about every other streetcorner; telling her jokes about his late grandmother's cat Turtle; the best way – according to him – to make spaghetti; whether ripples in the pond should be treated as the butterfly effect or not. Despite that, however, he never loses track of what he was originally talking about, and just as easily switches from Turtle's adventures to last century's history of this city. Neither he nor Arthur have given it a name, though, always referring to it as, well, "it", or "this place,” or "the city."

While they walk, the landscape around them changes, in a soft, almost unnoticeable manner. The houses change from desert brown blending into the street and other houses, to clean lines that define each building clearly as its own place. From a pinkish red -- the colour the sky looks when the sun is going down, giving it its last moments -- to baby blue, and then back to orange red, as if it's nothing at all. Eames doesn't take notice to it, or at least doesn't pay attention to it, so it must be a normal occurence here. What he does notice is her looking around, though, and he says, "You'll get used to it after a while."

"So, is everything possible here?" She has to admit, with all the strange things that have been going on today, she expects the impossible at least every other corner.

Eames eyes her for a moment, trying to decide on what he will say. "This isn't a dream, sweetheart. Just because the rules are different, doesn't mean there are none at all. They're just trickier to keep track of."

They pleasantly walk in silence for awhile. Ariadne watches him finish a transaction with a man that seems to be a client, both of them talking in his hushed tones. The man has a long pointy nose, and ginger hair that just reaches the top of his ears. When he notices her watching him, he leers at her, and she frowns. "It was a pleasure doing business with you, Mr Fox," Eames says at last, and Ariadne is glad they're finally leaving. Are these the kind of people Eames usually deals with, even in the real world?

He says they're almost there, and a thought crosses her mind. "Arthur said there were places where you could access this... dimension," she starts, glances up to him as if to say, 'so that's how you can also still be in London'. "I assume enough people here visit every so often, right?" Eames nods, and while they walk his newly acquired coins jingle in his pocket. "What if that was where all legends and fairytales originally came from," she continues. "I mean, if they didn't hide, people would constantly see things they wouldn't be able to explain, so they'd do it the only way they could: by writing stories about it. Or possibly accounting it to God. But even if so many people no longer believe in that, because they're just stories, or because there's no evidence for it, it doesn't mean it can't be real."

"Plenty of people do believe just that," Eames says, "only believing what they see with their own eyes. There's a reason people still think the moonlanding was just a conspiracy. And after a while, we, the people who live here, had to accept that it wasn't acceptable anymore to appear the way we did. So we changed, many of us. Some live up there permanently, others go back and forth. Some don't want to bother changing at all, so they stay here."

"That's not what you really look like?" she asked, surprised.

"I don't think that's an appropriate question, Ariadne, considering most humans spend their time trying to change their appearance in order to fit into society and into made-up standards." It's not the same, she wants to say. It's not, and yet she knows that Eames does have a point. "Most of them who stay up there, they get used to living like people. They don't ever go back. Essentially, they become human. Live like one, die like one. There really isn't all that much difference between us; and yet, for most people there is no question about it, there really is no such thing as fairies."

The regular meeting spot turns out to be a plaza; a fairly large one with just as many people as on the streets. There's a fountain raining water down on passerbyes in the centre, where Arthur is standing. He looks a little impatient while he waits for her and Eames to reach him. She's glad to see him, looking just like he always looks, looking just like he did before she lost him. When she and Eames walk up to him, they greet each other with fondness, as if they're sharing some private joke she's not aware of. The ease with which they slide into a pattern surprises her; it's different from how they acted during the inception job which, now that she thinks about it, was maybe more about territory than any true rivalry between them. They're less guarded here.

After exchanging pleasantries, Eames gets down to business. "Why'd you bring Ariadne down here?" he asks, and she's curious to hear the answer as well. Learning about this place has been interesting, more than that, even, but she's certain Arthur doesn't take all his colleagues down here.

"I do have my reasons," Arthur says, leading them away from the fountain to a more quiet spot. "Have you heard of the Crack?"

"Of course I have," Eames says immediately, "but that's just a story; it's not real."

Arthur looks slightly uncomfortable before leaning forward, to say in hushed tones, "That's just it, it's not." Eames' eyebrows raise, and Ariadne feels confused. What does he mean with, “the crack”? They're talking in this specific language made up just for people from here, it seems, because Eames seems to know what Arthur is talking about. "Come on," Arthur says, "I'll show you."

He moves briskly through the crowds, like a shadow attaching itself to walls and and people, completely disappearing into the environment. She's lucky he's actually holding her hand again, otherwise she surely would've lost him. On their way, he and Eames keep whispering to each other, and occasionally Eames hisses something loudly, as if he can't quite believe what Arthur is telling him. The sky gets darker, and they move in and out of buildings. Arthur leads them through dark spots and bursts of light, doors that aren't quite doors, more like doorways into other streets and places. When they've finally reached their destination, Ariadne is not quite sure if the room they're in is in a house or not. She realises now where Arthur gets his fondness for paradoxes: he's literally living in one.

A moving object catches her attention, and only then does she notice there's a curtain in the middle of the room, softly billowing back and forth. The fabric is dark, but she thinks she may be able to see through it, there are dark forms moving on the other side. She leans forward to be able to see better, but Arthur puts a hand on her shoulder.

"We don't know what it does," he explains, "it might be dangerous to touch." Just to make certain, Ariadne touches the totem in her pocket. Is this still reality?

"This is it?" Eames asks, stepping closer to the curtain himself, but making sure he stays well out of its billowing range.

"This is where it started. It grows. Not quite so fast you can see it with the naked eye, but it's noticeable. I only heard about it by accident, and since I've seen it last, it's taken more casualties."

"You said it's a crack," Ariadne says, "but a crack through what, exactly? I mean, it's a curtain."

“Imagine the cities on the world, all the countries, as a pancake." He throws Eames a warning glance, to not interrupt him, because even he realises it sounds ridiculous "Now, imagine all existing dimensions as pancakes, all stacked on top of each other. They're all in contact with each other, and if something happens to one of the pancakes, it may influence the other ones. If one of the pancakes is torn, you gain access to another dimension, basically. The natural walls separating them is torn down because of the hole that is created. The tear might grow bigger with time, and the other dimensions in closest contact with each other may start interfering; overlapping you might say. So if you have jam on one pancake, and maple syrup on another, the two might mix – and it's likely it won't be very tasty. These holes create extra entrances to the other dimensions that people could fall through; accidentally, on purpose, whichever. Usually, only those who know about it can enter another dimension. If the hole in the dimension gets big enough, it will become irreparable. If worst comes to worst, the dimension might be torn apart, just like a pancake could be."

"That," Eames says, looking very amused, "was one of the most entertaining and horrendous analogies I've ever heard."

"Thank you," Arthur says, not before rolling his eyes.

"So, is this a gate back to Earth?" Ariadne asks.

"Technically, this still is Earth," Eames quips, "but I'm not sure, actually. This could lead to a whole different dimension altogether."

"It could lead to nothing at all," Arthur adds, "which is the space inbetween, and there's no way out of that." He looks at Ariadne, a bit embarassed. "I thought that maybe you could help us fix the hole, before it's too late."

Eames is studying the curtain from up close, now, mutters a few incomprehensible words before Ariadne realises he's saying it's "extradimensional".

"I'm sorry?" she says.

Eames straightens up, directing his questions to Arthur. "It doesn't belong here. You said it grew bigger?" Arthur nods, and Eames takes his time to study the curtain some more. He wanders over to the wall the curtain seems to be attached to, touches it at different spots, and at one point leans forward and listens to it. Of all the strange things Eames has done in her company, this is probably top five material, Ariadne thinks. "It's not just a hole," he declares at last, "it's hungry, it's eating the dimension."

"You're saying that's a cannibalistic curtain?"

"The curtain is just what protects it, it's what behind it -- or rather, isn't -- that's most important here. You thought Ariadne could fix this?" he asks Arthur.

"Maybe," Arthur replied, "we both have seen what she can do in the dreamscape, why not try it here?"

"It's not the same as dreaming." Eames repeats the same thing he told Ariadne just an hour ago. "It would break all the rules." He sighs. "We'll talk about this later, see if it's actually fixable."

"What if it's not?" Arthur presses.

"Than we'll deal with it," Eames says pleasantly, turning to Ariadne. "Now, Arthur will bring you back. Don't worry about us not finding you, we will." He winks, and disappears out of the room. When she and Arthur leave themselves, Eames has already disappeared out of sight. Arthur actually listens to Eames, and takes her hand and leads her up several flights of stairs and before she knows it they're back in LA.

Arthur drops her off at her hotel, and when she asks for her key – she apparently lost it somewhere on the trip -- the receptionists look surprised; she's been gone for two whole days. Arthur walks her up to her room and when he leaves he kisses her on her cheek; she's still holding the door and staring down the hall, even when he's long gone.

But she's made her decision, because of this. By the end of the week, Ariadne flies back to Paris, and picks up her architecture studies where she left off.

~*~

Ariadne first became aware of there being a problem when Cobb called her on her cellphone, wanting to know whether she had spoken to Arthur. Now, usually she wouldn't have given his inquiry much thought, but seeing as it was the first thing he said when she picked up, she thought he needed to straighten out his priorities. She had been standing in the middle of a crowded hallway, students passing her when the call came, and she had pressed her books to her chest, her other hand trying to keep her phone attached to her ear. "What?" had been the first thing she'd said. She regained her composure while she dragged herself to a quiet corner. "You mean, you haven't spoken to him yet?" It had surprised her. From the way Arthur had spoken about him, she would've expected him to have at least called by now.

"You _have_ spoken to him?" Cobb's voice had asked on the other end of the line, sounding surprised.

"Yeah," she'd said, "he visited me when I was still in LA. I went back to Paris after that."

Cobb had coughed, and she'd suddenly felt awkward, as if everyone in the hallway knew exactly what she had done, that she'd been poking around in someone else's mind. He'd asked her how she was doing herself, and she'd said fine, and he'd said okay, and after a few moments of silence he'd said he'd better hang up.

After that, he called her five more times, and finally, when he calls her in the middle of the night, asking if she's spoken to Arthur yet again, she says, "Is it important?"

"Not really," he says, taken aback.

"I'm trying to sleep, Cobb. If you really want to speak to Arthur, don't call me in the middle of the night to talk to me about if I've talked to him; you need to actually talk to him yourself." It's silent on the other end of the line, she sighs and hangs up, slapping a hand over her face. Between exams and the intense desire to plunge back into the world of dreams, she doesn't think she can handle this. She turns on her side, slowly falls back asleep, and thinks that should be the end of it.

Unfortunately, it isn't.

Two days later, just when she's dropping her keys on the tiny table in the hallway, she notices the sound of the television droning out of the living room. Didn't she turn that off? She slowly walks forward, and finds Eames sitting on her couch, completely enthralled by some French soap opera. "I thought you'd have a nicer flat," he says, without looking up, "with all that spare money you've got lying around."

"I'm a student," she says, and gives him a pointed look (that he also doesn't notice). "I don't remember giving you a key."

Eames manages to look only slightly smug when he finally looks up, and she rolls her eyes. She really should've known better.

Ariadne doesn't particularly mind his presence – it's actually nice to have someone to talk to, after having come home to an empty apartment every day for years. On the second day, when she opens the door, she's greeted by a lovely smell, and realises Eames has cooked dinner.

But besides all that, when after three days he still hasn't told her why he's here, she corners him in the hallway, and asks him just as much. At least he has the decency to look guilty, she thinks. "Are you avoiding someone?" she asks, thinking of all the phonecalls she has received. "Cobb? Arthur?" she raises her eyebrows, and with the way Eames tries to look anywhere but her face, she realises she's hit the nail straight on the head. "What'd you do to piss him off?" she asks. "Last time I saw you guys you were... chummy." She makes a face, deciding that's not really the word to describe Arthur or Eames, not to mention them together.

"Well," Eames says, taking his time to draw out the last consonant, as if he really wants to avoid talking about it. She feels herself rolling her eyes when her phone rings, again, but this time it's not Cobb. It's Arthur. Is he psychic, she thinks to herself.

"Is Eames there?" is the first thing he says, and really, is the only thing people call her for to check whether someone else is there?

"Yeah," she says, giving Eames a sideways glance.

"Good," he says, "tell him not to bother calling me anymore, I don't want to hear it." He pauses. "Good luck with your exams," he says at last.

"Thanks, I guess." They make some more small talk while she and Eames are standing awkwardly in her hallway, and when Arthur finally hangs up, she relays Arthur's message to him.

"Well," he says again, "I guess I'll be taking my leave than." After she makes him promise to visit her, she's alone again. She listens to the emptiness of her house, and closes her eyes.

When she re-opens them, the room is dark, and her phone is ringing. Cobb, the display says. When he asks if she's seen Eames, she hangs up on him.

~*~

Ariadne has to admit she has a great deal of trouble saying no whenever dreaming is involved. She knew this when she first came back, after that first session with Cobb, and she knows it now, when she'll stare into the distance and wonder how much she can distort that building– before she realises she's not dreaming at all. It scares her, how easily she finds herself thinking it doesn't matter whether it's a dream or reality, because it does matter, and she has to pinch herself to remind her of this world.

But she can't stay away from dreaming, from the addiction, the adrenaline rush when she closes her eyes and opens them to a world entirely her own. This is why, when Eames offers her a job, she doesn't say no. Oh, she likes to pretend to be busy, but in reality she is eager, and her hand curls around her phone, knuckles white from holding on too tight. All that she has fantasized about, she wants to make that tangible, touchable.

She packs her bags and takes off, giving professor Miles a moment's notice that she won't be here for some time. He attempts to look disappointed, but she knows that he knows she can't stay away, not after he was the one that introduced her.

Ariadne's plane lands in Vienna not too soon after, and Eames is waiting for her in the Arrivals hall. "It was quiet without you, love," he says, and it makes her raise an eyebrow. If anything, working with Eames is anything but quiet. He always has something to say.

His rental is the epitome of inconspicuousness: it's a white van that groans and protests at every street corner, and she sits the entire way to their meeting point with her hands clenched around the seat, wondering when the machine will fall apart around her. Miraculously, it holds up, and it gets them where they need to be: an abandoned three story apartment building.

It's only a three man job, what they're doing; Eames plays both the parts of forger and extractor, while Ariadne builds and builds, and Arthur explains diagrams and statistics that make her head spin.

But despite being able to dream again, and marvelling at both the newness and familiarity of it, she notices the animosity between Arthur and Eames. Or rather, the way Arthur seems to treat Eames. He's professional, absolutely – but he's never anything other than that. They don't tease each other, or joke around, and if this isn't about the barrage of phonecalls that she received a couple of months ago, she will eat her one of her scarves All the while, they continue the job, continue being professional to each other, and Ariadne amuses herself with trying to think of what the previous owner's of the building did; it vaguely smells like overcooked cauliflower and cheese. She can still smell it while she's laying in her bed in her hotel room, staring at the ceiling, her hand twitching despite the lack of paper to draw on.

However, despite the distant attitude Arthur keeps up (he doesn't look up when she sits down next to him, tries to ask about Eames, about him, about them both. Even though she does try to not sound too persistent, she's afraid she's failed on that front), he is not as composed as she is used to. He is, somehow, forgetful, and Ariadne is strangely unfamiliar with the sight of Arthur trying to get his notes straight.

"I'm worried," Eames says one day, when they cross the street, trying to figure out whether to just order some food, or eat out. It's close to 9 PM, and even if they've only just left the abandoned building themselves, Arthur hadn't been anywhere close to finishing -- or that was what he had said. It's not as if it truly matters; she'll go to her hotel later, and probably spend hours staring at the ceiling, tugging at the invisible scarf around her neck. She suspects insomnia is just the tip of the iceberg, though. From now on, she'll always have unexplained symptoms of a disease that isn't classified as an illness anywhere.

"About him?" she asks, pushing her nose further into her scarf. The wind is cold, and cuts through her clothes straight onto her skin.

"He won't talk to me," he says, and she's not sure if he's irritated or just exasparated, "and believe me, I've tried." She believes him. She's not the only one who has spent time with Arthur on this job, and she's not blind. But, she knows Arthur won't just admit to anything, especially not to Eames, not right now. She images Arthur to be a man stubborn enough to keep his mouth shut, even when he has to breathe. This is why she knows what Eames means when he says Arthur won't listen to him.

Ariadne has been in Vienna for nine days now. Nine days of closely working together, of planning, of watching both Arthur and Eames sleep, and waking up to their watchful eyes. The first day, maybe even the second, she wrote all strange things off as coincedences. By the fifth day, she realised they weren't, and now, she knows something is wrong. She knows because she's seen how Arthur scrambles for his totem once he's woken up, needs to feel the soft edges of the die underneath his fingertips in order to ground himself. Sometimes he'll stand up, walk over to a private space to do it. Sometimes he doesn't, and from her workspace she'll see him drop his totem one, two, three times before he manages to get it right. She knows he loses his train of thought while he's talking, his hands mid-air, the rest of the sentence remaining unspoken. Eames can fill in the gaps often enough, but she can tell it makes Arthur uncomfortable. Not just because Eames seems to know him that well, but because he can't even control it happening.

She knows because, sometimes, when she's discussing a detail of the labyrinth with Eames, and the warehouse is quiet save for their hushed voices, she'll glance over to Arthur, and he's staring at his hands, not quite believing they're there. He does it more often, and longer than she expects every day, and she wonders if he's aware he's doing it.

All these things separately, she wouldn't have batted an eye. They're dreamworkers, they all (must) have their own quirks. But it's the combination that frightens Ariadne. The realisation that Arthur is trying to remind himself of something. Of someone. And if that someone is himself, they're in for something far worse than any of them could have anticipated.

The morning after that night, when Eames has voiced his concerns and she can sigh in relief because she really isn't the only one picking up on Arthur's odd behaviour, Ariadne returns to the apartment building, confident that they should be able to confront Arthur now. When she closes the door into the room behind her, Arthur is just getting off the phone, and his lips are a tight line. She stops abruptly, halfway to his desk.

"Where's Eames?" Arthur asks, putting the phone on his desk next to the stacks of paper.

"He's not here yet?" she says, and he raises an eyebrow, as if to say, would I ask if he was?

"That was our client, on the phone," he ends up saying, "he wants to move the job forward by a whole week."

"We have to be ready by Friday?" She puts a hand on her hip, and closes her eyes to think. They'll have four days to get ready.

Arthur nods when she opens her eyes again. "Our mark will be leaving on a trip that will take at least a few months, and we can't stall that long. Friday will be our last option, so we'll have to move quickly, but I can't get a hold of Eames." She wants to ask him if he's been calling the forger, but Arthur is busy moving papers on his desk, moving them aside, putting them on other stacks, lifting them up. Some of the papers start drifting onto the floor, but he takes no notice of it, determined to find something buried within the pile of information.

A tin with pens falls over and rolls across the surface before bumping into the closed laptop, and a stray notebook flops over the edge, and Arthur's search becomes more and more frantic, until she's certain there's actually more of a mess on the floor than on his desk, and she puts a hand on his arm.

"Arthur," she says, calmly, quietly, and he stills underneath her touch.

"I need to find him." She can hear him breathe in through his nose, exhale.

"Eames'll show up," Ariadne says, "he's probably just running late."

Arthur swallows, than stares at the papers he's still holding, clenched in his right fist. "You're right," he says, but he doesn't stop staring at his hand, not when she ushers him to sit down, not even when Eames comes in and kneels next to his chair. He just sits and stares, waiting for the world to end and take him.

~*~

  
  
The Vienna job goes pear-shaped, and from the moment they are chased down by men with quite imposing guns to the one where Eames is able to drop her off at the airport, fake passport in tow, she hasn't been able to breathe. Her hands are still shaking when she boards her plane, and although she knows she's safe, for now, she can't help but feel terrified something is going to go terribly wrong. Something already has gone terribly wrong.

Ariadne doesn't understand what's going on, not yet, too much has happened to for it to register properly. She does realise that what happened may have been a re-visit to a dream they had before, not unlike Mal. Was Mal like this, she asks herself. Was she this scared, this disoriented? Did she act this way? As far as Ariadne knows, Arthur has never been to Limbo. They couldn't have performed an inception on him, could they?

The dream had collapsed around them just as Eames had been ready to use his forge, and the mark had found out he was dreaming. He called out his security, and the group of three had had to make a run for it, Eames trying to get Arthur to run along as quickly as possible.

Her plane makes a detour via Frankfurt, and hours later she finally arrives in Paris, where she drags herself to her flat, and tries to make sense of everything that's happened. She realises her suitcase with her things is still in Vienna not too soon after.

Ariadne sits on her bed, stares at the setting sun through the window, and wonders if eventually, all dreamers end up like this. Will they all eventually lose their identity, their sense of self? The look on Eames' face when he came into the room that and saw Arthur sitting in that chair is still imprinted in her mind; a mixture of shock, and the dawning realisation that he's losing Arthur – and there's nothing he can do about it.

There's only one other person who knows what it's like to lose someone that way. Cobb. Her hands tighten on the sheets, and she wonders if Eames would call, if _she_ should call. Eventually, she decides to do it. To check, she tells herself. Just to make sure. She knows the relationship between Arthur and Cobb has been strained ever since the inception, but Cobb needs to know what's going on. They're still friends, right?

She dials his number, and his voice sounds both surprised and slightly sleepy. "Ariadne?"

"I forgot about the time difference," she admits, and she hears him groaning at the other end of the line.

"What is it?" he asks.

"It's Arthur, Cobb," she replies, "he's..." She can't find the words.

"Why isn't he calling me himself? If he wants something, he has my number."

"He can't," she protests, before he can hang up on her.

"And why is that?" he asks. She's glad he doesn't say, 'can't or won't?'

"I'm not sure what's wrong, but whatever happened after the inception, and whatever you're angry about, Arthur can't help you with that now. He's..." A realisation starts to dawn on her.

"He's what?"

She mumbles a couple of curses, momentarily ignoring Cobb; this really should have been obvious. "Cobb," she says, "Eames told you about the, uh, the other world, right?" He'd mentioned it to her in passing, in Vienna.

"You know about that too?!" Cobb sounds completely awake by now. "So Arthur told you, and not me?"

Ariadne really doesn't know what to say to that. "Look, I don't know why he did what he did, and that's not the point. Fact is, Arthur is slowly losing that which makes him the man we know him as, and it may be because of that world. When I was there I realised it's very close to feeling like a dream, and he told us about this rip in space, I don't know what it was, that was destroying it. Maybe that's destroying him as well." She pauses a moment. "You know, considering how much the two worlds cross over, I'm surprised this hasn't happened earlier. Do you think that what happened to Mal, might have been a cause?"

"I don't know," Cobb says, "I can't tell without even having seen him. Where is he right now?"

"I just came back from Vienna, he was still there when I left but they could be travelling to the other side of the world by now. What do you think we should do?" she asks him quietly. "Do you think we can help Arthur?"

"Only if he realises he has something to live for here."

~*~

Ariadne hadn't expected to see this world again this soon, especially not in this way. Not with Arthur barely holding on and Cobb looking permanently torn about whether he should be very upset, or just taking it all in and be amazed. Their group is getting odd looks from bystanders, which is not all that strange. After all, Cobb looks completely out of place, and Eames is dragging along a man who can barely walk on his own two feet. She realises they're the odd ones out here, the strange people.

Eames is taking them to the place where they ended up last time, the room with the billowing curtain, and this time around it doesn't take nearly as long to get there.

Eames sets Arthur on the floor, so he can lean against the wall when they get there. "Are we dreaming, Eames?" he asks, looking confused. "Are we? I can't really tell..." he trails off when he looks around. "This looks familiar."

Eames kneels down next to him, and Ariadne can feel her stomach clench. "You're not dreaming, Arthur. This place, it means you're home.

"Am I?"

"Yes, that's why it looks familiar." He straightens up, leaving Arthur down there. "From what I've heard," he tells his two other tag-alongs, "is that the Crack has been expanding. It's growing bigger, and so far, no one has been able to do stop it, or slow it down."

"So there's nothing that can be done," Ariadne says. She's given Cobb a quick rundown of what she's heard and seen the last (and first) time she was here.

"No, probably not." Eames runs a hand through his hair. "This crack is basically destroying everything we knew. It will tear this whole place down."

"Will it hurt you, or affect you in some kind of way, with this place disappearing?" She can explain it as curiousity, but it would help to make her understand more of what is happening to Arthur.

"Both Arthur and I have been separate from this place for a long time, it shouldn't have this much influence on us. Or on him." He's pacing back and forth by now. "So why..."

Cobb finally decides to get involved in the conversation. "Mal believed she had to wake up to go back to her real life," he says, looking slightly heartbroken. "But Arthur, he's not like that, is he? He's just confused. He's not certain, that's why he needs to reassure himself."

"So what do we do to solve it?" Ariadne asks.

Eames sighs, and looks like he doesn't want to say what he's about to say next. "We make it so there's only one option left: either he's dreaming, or he's not. No inbetween, no being uncertain about it."

A realisation starts dawning on her. "But that means this place will..."

"I know, I've realised that. I know that Arthur asked you to rebuild it, because he thought you could. But I don't think that's what we should do. I'm asking you to tear it down. All of it. We have to make certain there is no way back. I don't think there's any other way." He looks back at the curtain. “It's already too far along, I don't know if anything could still be saved, if we tried that.”

Cobb is frozen in his steps, seemingly appalled at what Eames deems the solution. And Ariadne isn't sure. What Eames is saying sounds logical to her, "But what about the people who live here?"

"They'll realise what's going on. Most of them, us, have a life away from here, so they will have a chance to escape. It won't take long." She's still unsure about what she should do, but one look at Arthur changes her mind. Should she be selfish, because otherwise she won't get him back. Eames won't get him back. She has to do it. She has no choice.

Ariadne reaches into herself, into that places where she imagines when she builds in dreams. And if she can build, she can certainly destroy. She just has to reverse the process.

The curtain in front of her ripples, and a powerful wind picks up, whipping her hair around her face. Sunlight starts streaming into the room through the ceiling, where it has started caving in a corner, and holes start puncturing through in other places. "Let me help you," Cobb says and takes her hand. Walls crumble around them, not just of the room they're in, but of the surrounding walls, streets and houses. Ariadne can hear footsteps, people running, but the sound is so far away from here. It's a brand new day, and she's taking apart people's lives one by one. Her cheeks are wet, and when Cobb begins to pull her away, out of the house, the damage done undoable, she realises she's crying. They're running from their own self-created destruction, and tears keep spilling out of her eyes.

When they are able to stop running, take a breath of air, she can't stop, and Cobb pulls her against his chest, and she quietly promises herself she will never dream again, because this destruction will always be at the back of her mind.

Eames has been carrying Arthur's unconscious body, and he's finally able to put him down. Just as down there, people are staring at the strange appearance of people out of nowhere, sweaty and completely out of breath. Eames is sitting down next to Arthur just as he's slowly opening his eyes, and maybe, Ariadne thinks, she's part of something bigger now.

"Your name is Arthur," Eames says, and Arthur smiles back at him.

"And nothing else ever will be."

END


End file.
